mgo.licio.us

"The face of the operation is Briatore (referred to exclusively in the film by his colleagues and angry, chanting detractors as "Flavio"), an anthropomorphic radish who spends most of his time at QPR plotting to fire all of the managers."

At press time, Harbaugh had sent Michigan’s athletic department an envelope containing a heavily annotated seating chart, a list of the 63,000 seat views he had found unsatisfactory, and a glowing 70-page report on section 25, row 12, seat 9, which he claimed is “exactly what the great sport of football is all about.”

Dear Diary and the Life of Pirate Al Borges

If you've missed the bumping, Ron Utah has been following Borges's coaching history up and down the Pacific coast, and through about 14,000 plays called. Time to play catch-up:

Part I: A young Albison Issaquary Pirate Borges (that isn't his name) began coaching at Salinas High School as a 19-year-old assistant. He spent a year as an assistant at Cal, then went was a tight ends/receivers coach at Diablo Valley College. Then he was OC there, then at Portland State, then was at Boise State when they were making their transition up to Division I-AA. Then it was Oregon and UCLA.

Part II: Borges's ship is attacked and he is forced to join his hometown Cal Bears for the awful pre-Tedford times. After the mistake of joining the Indiana of the Pac Ten, Borges was ready to join the Indiana of the Big Ten, which was entering its DiNardo phase. Side note: Brian is going to be on a panel with DiNardo at a Chicago alumni event in July, the week of the Big Ten meetings. Raise of hands (or hooks) for those who think Brian will start asking DiNardo about Borges, and Gerry will be like "who is this guy?" Anyway then Borges went to Auburn and that's in there too.

Part III: After getting blamed for Auburn's awful 2007 offense under Tuberville, Borges took a year off then got a call from this guy who was taking over at San Diego State.

Part IV: Finally to the data, with career run-pass numbers and his far more efficient passing offense. We also go through his quarterbacks, and a lot of receivers with gaudy YPC numbers (evidence he likes the bomb) and running backs who mostly regressed. Ron also mentions Borges isn't really a recruiter. In the comments he mentions Borges's success on opening drives. Part V?

Diarist of the week assuredly.

Conference of the Crappy QBs.

Last week we welcomed back one of the great diarists from yesteryear, MCalibur. Fed up with passer rating, which as a standalone statistic can't differentiate between Chad Henne and Tommy Rees (see end of the diary) the diarist who is not a sword turned completion %, yards per attempt, touchdown % and interception % into passer ratings, and then used standard year-to-year improvement to project How Gardner should fare this season. He followed up this week by going through all the Big Ten's quarterbacks, and then the rest of the guys on the schedule this year. Here is his data on 11 quarterbacks assembled into a table (rank among the 11 is in parentheses).

Rk

Player

School

Comp%

YPA

TD%

INT%

AVG

1

Devin Gardner

Mich

132.8 (6th)

176.3 (1st)

177 (1st)

98.3 (9th)

146.1

2

Joel Stave

Wis

129.8 (7th)

168.6 (2nd)

125.9 (6th)

152.4 (3rd)

144.2

3

Braxton Miller

OSU

127.3 (8th)

144.5 (3rd)

137.8 (3rd)

158.4 (2nd)

142.0

4

Taylor Martinez

Neb

143.5 (3rd)

140.1 (4th)

142.6 (2nd)

124.8 (7th)

137.8

5

Kain Colter

NW

169.1 (1st)

102.5 (8th)

130.4 (4th)

146.3 (4th)

137.1

6

Tommy Rees

ND

158.9 (2nd)

124.4 (6th)

123.4 (7th)

119.3 (8th)

131.5

7

Cameron Coffman

Ind

138 (4th)

119.2 (7th)

107.1 (8th)

145.7 (5th)

127.5

8

Andrew Maxwell

MSU

101.9 (10th)

102.3 (9th)

96.4 (9th)

171.3 (1st)

118.0

9

Chandler Whitmer

UConn

124.5 (9th)

132 (5th)

90.6 (10th)

94.3 (10th)

110.4

10

N. Scheelhasse

Ill

137.4 (5th)

96.3 (11th)

78.6 (11th)

125.1 (6th)

109.4

11

Philip Nelson

Minn

88.2 (11th)

100.4 (10th)

128.9 (5th)

81.9 (11th)

99.9

Kudos to LSAClassof2000 for algebraically finding the individual-year APRs for the rest of the conference. Since we have rivals who aren't so good at algebra here's a table of their constituent scores versus ours over the last eight years:

Year

Michigan

vs MSU

vs OSU

2005

941

+35

-22

2006

978

+33

+47

2007

924

-12

-58

2008

945

+8

-51

2009

897

-49

-94

2010

946

+13

-25

2011

984

+28

-10

2012

981

-1

+11

To Sparty trolls: our oldest constituent score is a major outlier. Let's high-five for being just about even this year in a metric that measures attendance and retention.

To Urban Meyer: It's true that Ohio State was trouncing Michigan since getting trounced itself in 2006…until you arrived.

LSA was also the subject of Six Zero's latest MGoProfile feature, where he explains why he's the only guy here with an adorable pony avatar other those being punished by the mods for avatar infractions. 100% percent agree on the power to delete or edit one's own posts.

Etc. And Michigan's massive endowment isn't so big when you consider other academic factors (like that we have twice as many students as comparable schools).

Best of the Boards

BEST OF THE LOOT

The thread of Michigan swag owned by the readers got huge, and makes me feel pretty crappy about my collection, which is really just a folder full of my old Michigan tickets and old copies of the Daily. Here's MgoBlueD's basement:

And here's the guest room that Wolverine Devotee keeps for when the Buckeye relatives come to town (I'm guessing):

You know how Alabama installed a water fountain in their locker room? And how EDSBS suggested what other schools should do? Well 1484covered the Big Ten. Northwestern's gonna be pretty pissed when they realize Mark Huyge's on our side.

ETC. Pipelines discussion is useful—would love to see a diary on M pipelines through the years and what happened to them. Avant's Hands discusses blowout decorum in anticipation of Spain versus 11 athletic-looking tourists Tahiti kidnapped from a cruise ship that was going by. UM Solar Car Team written up on FoxNews. Vincent Smith and Brandin Hawthorne want to play you on Call of Duty. I'm too old for that, but anyone from Team 120 wanna play Goldeneye?